


The Champion

by perniciousLizard



Series: Hot and Cold Blooded (Alphyne Collection) [17]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alphynecentric, Alphys/Undyne-centric, F/F, Mario Kart, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, special guest star PAPYRUS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 18:31:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15102524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perniciousLizard/pseuds/perniciousLizard
Summary: Undyne loves Alphys with all her heart, but she also wants to kick her butt at Mario Kart.





	The Champion

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt: **Alphys and Undyne play Mario Kart. VERY AGGRESSIVELY.**  
>  Thank you to [eevees-garbage](https://eevees-garbage.tumblr.com/) for sending this idea in!
> 
> Special note: I have played Mario Kart maybe five times in my life, so please enjoy me keeping this as vague as possible while I write more specifically about the spirit of competition.  
> Extra special note: Shout out and apologies to everyone who has an author subscription on me! I had no idea I'd gotten quite so backed up - 8 months backed up! - posting things here. That's probably pretty annoying if you get an email every time. Sorry, friends.

Undyne liked to compete.  There was something about the thrill of competition that pushed her to new heights of skill.  Alone, she could carry six, maybe seven children at once.  If she was in a child lifting competition, she could lift fifteen and a half children, all the while shouting taunts at her rivals.  

Alphys was different.  Undyne would say she had been  _ambitious_ once, and when Alphys was sure she was right, she would state her point for hours at a time, but those just weren’t the same thing.  

No matter how many times Undyne tried to rile her up into an intense air hockey battle, or tried to transform self-esteem jogging with Papyrus into a race, Alphys just cheerfully accepted her own defeat.  Undyne didn’t mind hearing how cool she looked when she won, but  _still_.  

She’d thought, once, that she had managed to get Alphys worked up about winning a high stakes  bowling game against their friends, but during the harrowing final few rounds Undyne had glanced back at where Alphys was sitting and found her checking her phone, watching the trailer for the new season of her favorite anime.

Undyne learned to accept it.  Alphys wasn’t competitive, but she was passionate.  She was brilliant, she loved her friends, and she was always trying to improve herself in ways that mattered to her.  So what if she sat on the side when Undyne got a team together for beach volleyball? Undyne loved her for being herself.  Wouldn’t it be worse for Alphys to pretend to care about winning the annual monster arm wrestling competition, or whatever?  Undyne was pretty proud of herself for being such an understanding girlfriend.  

But she was wrong.

Completely, 100% wrong, from start to finish.  Undyne would have said Alphys didn’t have a competitive bone in her body, but she actually had one,  _just_  one, and it contained an entire skeleton’s worth of condensed competitive energy.

“Oh, sweet!  A racing game?”  Undyne knelt on the floor, digging through a pile of videogames to find one she felt like playing.  They’d recently finished an epic multi-game fantasy dating sim, and its conclusion had left a hole in their schedule that only a new video game could fill.

Alphys leaned over the back of the couch, checking what she held up.  "…oh, right!  I, uh..I really liked that game for a while.“

"Who’s the mustache gremlin?”

“You d-don’t have to play as him, even though he’s the one it’s named after! There’s all sorts of characters!  Princesses, turtle monsters - ” Alphys launched into a full description of the character choices while Undyne brought over the game and set things up.

“So don’t kick my butt too hard!”  Undyne said, laughing.  "You’re an expert, right?“

"Um, I’ve played…well, I got really into it for a little while, but it was mostly me against the computer which is a  _completely_  different experience than playing against a person, obviously, so then I - well, I did find some friends to play with and then…well!  Never mind!  Let’s pick characters!"  

"Hell yeah!”

“Maybe you should play against the computer a couple times, to get the hang of the controls?”

“Nah, that’s for babies.  Show me what you’ve got.”

Undyne noticed unease flicker across Alphys’ features, but it passed so quickly Undyne wondered if she had imagined it.

She expected to lose, and she did, handily.  Where did her hands go?  At one point, Undyne almost ripped her controller in half in frustration.  The worst part was she got the impression Alphys was trying to help her.  She spotted her start to lean in, and then Alphys leaned back again and suddenly she’d be in second place instead of first.   

But she’d still be the first one across the finish line, every single time.

“Th-thanks, Undyne.  That really took me back,” Alphys said.  "Eheh…I used to play too much.“

"You won!  I’m proud of you,” Undyne said.  

Alphys looked away, just for a second, and then she smiled.  "Yeah!  It was fun!“

Undyne needed to get better.  She had only seen the tiniest flicker of the skill Alphys was hiding, and she wanted to see it  _all_.  She wanted to see Alphys struggle to keep up with her.  She wanted to beat her and see her swoon in admiration at a display of skill that she understood and admired.  Screw volleyball!  Screw bowling!  

She was going to get so good at Mario Kart that Alphys was going to fall in love with her _all over again_.  

She hid her plan from everyone but Papyrus.  He was her training partner.  He thought the game was a silly child’s game, at first, but he eventually admired the puzzle-like structure of the racing tracks and looked forward to their friendly competitions.  

"I’ve been playing that Mario Kart game with Papyrus,” Undyne said.  "Just a couple times!  But I think I have a handle on the controls now.“

"Oh!  It’s really a fun game, right?  More complicated than you think when you start - like there are levels of strategy that - uh, anyway!  Ok!” Alphys took their dinner out of the microwave and brought it into the living room.  Undyne couldn’t wait until she showed Alphys how much she’d improved.

Alphys beat her again, immediately.  "You really have a hang of the controls!“

Undyne almost threw her controller through the window.  "Yeah!”  she said, through gritted teeth.  "How much did you play this, again?"

"W-well…um.”  Alphys looked away.  "I don’t remember how many hours I logged, but there were a couple months where I probably played….a few hours a day?"

There was absolutely no way Alphys didn’t remember the exact number of hours she had played.  That wasn’t how Alphys’ mind worked.  

"But you’re so much better!  Let’s play again!”  Was there a light in Alphys’ eyes, or was that just the lamp reflecting on her glasses?

-

“I have to beat her,” Undyne said, pacing back and forth in Papyrus’ kitchen. “I have to run her smug adorable face right off the road!”

“YOU MEAN IN THE GAME.”

“No shit!  Jeez, Papyrus, what do you take me for?”  She whapped him on the back, laughing, and he fell on the ground.

“YOU CAN GET VERY…COMPETITIVE.”

“This is just a friendly girlfriend thing!  I want to kick her ass at this freaking game, and then make her some tea and eat snacks and watch cheesy anime the rest of the night.”

“I SEE!  SO THIS IS PART OF SOME ELABORATE DATING RITUAL.”

“Uh, yeah, Papyrus.  Step one - complete devastation in Mario Kart.  Step two - we get HITCHED on the BEACH on a MOONLIT NIGHT.”

“HOW ROMANTIC!  DID YOU BUY A RING?”

“No - ok YES you nerd, but – ANYWAY, STEP THREE!  I noogie all the huge dorks in the room!"  

"OW, WAIT, BUT WE HAVEN’T REACHED THAT STEP IN THE PROCESS YET."  

-

"W-wow, Undyne, you’re really good!”  Alphys said, smiling.  

Alphys had beat her.   Again.  Easily.  

“Alphys, I need you to do something for me,” Undyne said.  "I need you to be honest."

"Wh-what? I’m… _trying_  to be honest, all the time!  How could you say that about…”  She trailed off into a long silence, and then she sighed.  "What do you want to know?"

"How much of this game have you played?”

"Oh, god.  Um. Way too much.”  She laughed, nervous.  "Do you remember when I was supposed to be working on that project for Mettaton, and I _was_ …sort of?  I, uh, hit a snag and I decided to play a game to try and…loosen up, a bit?  Clear my head.  This was that game.  I got, um, reeeeeally into it.  Partially out of frustration because I still couldn’t figure out an answer to his battery issues, but also, I don’t know.  It was…fun?"

They had gone on quite a few dates during that time, but Alphys had always seemed tired.  Alphys when she was tired tended to have a frenetic energy, almost a level of desperation underneath everything she did.  Undyne had assumed she was having trouble with her work and was watching a lot of anime.  This wasn’t that different.

"It kind of got easy, so I joined a club, and then there was a, uh, tournament, and - ”

“Wait!  You were in a competition, and you didn’t  _tell_  me?"  

"I was supposed to be working!  I felt so guilty!  Every second I wasn’t playing, I felt guilty.”

“But I would’ve cheered you on!”

“I…thank you. That would have been nice.”  Alphys relaxed.  "I don’t know.  Mettaton found out eventually, and he and his cousin and Sans for some reason hosted an intervention, and I haven’t played much since then."

All this had happened behind Undyne’s back.  "Did you  _win_?"  

"I, uh…” Alphys drew something out of her inventory.  It was a gold statue of the mustache gremlin.

“Holy SHIT, Alphys!”  Undyne hugged her tight.  "I’m so freaking proud of you right now!  That’s amazing!  That game is actually really really hard!"

"You’re…p-proud of me?  It’s just a…silly game, honestly.  I shouldn’t have gotten that into it.  I was just avoiding my problems, again.”

“Ok, yeah, but that’s still really cool!”

“Is it?”

“I mean, you’re a huge nerd!  This is like the ultimate cool thing for huge nerds!”

“Go big or go home, right?”  Alphys giggled.  

“And now that I know I’m going up against a  _championship winning gamer_  -”

“It was just a regional - ”

“A friggin CHAMPION with a creepy but  _totally badass_  statue, I know how much training I have to do to kick your butt!”

“Wh-what?”

“I’m going to win against you so hard you’re going to beg me to take your trophy away from you, because you just don’t deserve it anymore!”

“What?  Undyne, I earned that!  I spent  _months_  - and you think you can just waltz in and play a few games and beat  _me_?"  

There it was.

"YUP!  Maybe you know a bunch of lame strategies, but I have the honed reflexes of a natural warrior!  Once I start to really try -”

“I’ll - I’ll just beat you again!  You really think you can - are you serious? You have NO idea what you’re up against.  I could fall asleep and kick your butt!”

“That’s what I want to hear!”  Undyne grabbed her controller.

There was a fire in Alphys eyes.  The desire, no the  _need_  to win.  

-

It was a month of regular games before Undyne won her first one.  Alphys had been playing cocky all night, and she finally paid the price for it.  Undyne jumped on the couch, ripped the controller right out of its socket and almost threw the game system onto the floor.  She pumped her arms in the air.

“HELL YEAH! There’s a NEW champion in THIS house!”

“Oh, come one, Undyne!  That’s one out of, wh-what, a hundred?”  Alphys scrambled to put the system back in order.  "That wasn’t skill! That was just luck and I’ll prove it to you."

When Alphys won the next one, she clambered up onto the sofa and yelled, "S-suck on th-that!  No one can beat the champion!”

“YEAH!”  Undyne jumped up next to her and held her in the air.  Alphys’ head almost bumped on the ceiling.  "You’re the winner!"  She spun Alphys around until she got queasy.

They put away the controllers for the night.  Undyne made tea and Alphys got some snacks and brought them into the living room.  

"I think I’m going to, um, get sick if I go around the track again tonight,” Alphys admitted.

“We were like halfway through that lacrosse anime before we got kind of distracted,” Undyne said.

“Oh!  And the team captain was just about to confess something!  I can’t believe I forgot.”

Undyne grabbed a blanket and tossed it over both of them.  "I just want to know if they’re going to win."

"Well, even if they lose, I’m sure it’ll be like a  _moral_  victory,” Alphys said.  

“Screw moral victories,” Undyne said.  "I want to see someone get their butt kicked."

Alphys laughed.  She leaned against Undyne’s shoulder as the opening theme blared through the living room.  


End file.
